Laloo ministry balloons.

After nine months of struggling with a mouse of a ministry, Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav has finally pumped it up into a wheezing, obese mammoth.

From nine cabinet ministers, including the chief minister, and three ministers of state (which arch-rival Raghunath Jha walked out of to form the Janata Dal(S) party) which comprised the smallest-ever ministry, Yadav executed a quantum leap and added to his luggage 26 cabinet-rank ministers, 30 ministers of state and nine deputy ministers, marking up a grand total of 76.

While he has made a substantial cross-section of supporters happy, detractors are busy predicting that his ministry will soon collapse under its own blubber.

Yadav faced flak from day one. On the day of the swearing-in, two walked out in protest, two others refused to accept their posts, and two stayed out of Patna. And yet Yadav promised more, declaring: "If necessary, I will have more ministers."

That's a promise he doesn't have to keep. He has cunningly roped in all the dissent he can handle: about 56 per cent of the 116 MLAs and 11 MLCs who comprise the Janata Dal Legislature Party.

But the beefing up appalled his supporters as well, including the state unit of the CPI, his closest ally, which issued a harshly-worded statement describing the expansion as a "display of spineless opportunism".

The rumour is rife that Yadav will go further and accommodate the rest of the Janata Dal's 57 legislators as chairmen and vice-chairmen of various boards and corporations.

Out of 63 backward legislators, 31 have been made ministers; from among the 28 forward caste legislators, 18 have a place in the ministry; eight out of 12 Muslims have been rewarded, as have 11 of the 22 Harijans and both the tribal legislators. Such a toss-up had never been seen before.

Meanwhile the state bureaucracy is terrified: soon an army of ministers will move in to divest senior bureaucrats of their comfortable chambers in the secretariat.

In any case, half the officials, in a city that cannot accommodate them, are living in transit flats, hostels and circuit houses. A tantrum here and there and many bureaucrats will find themselves on the streets.

Further, officials expect cabinet meetings to be chaotic: the present cabinet room has the capacity to accommodate just 25 ministers whereas there are now 35 cabinet rankers, backed during meetings by an army of ministers of state and their minions. Quipped an official: "The cabinet meetings will have to be held in the open lawns or in Gandhi Maidan."

So where will the finances for the ministers come from? The estimated budget expenditure of Rs 1,805 crore was slashed to Rs 1,391 crore. Even out of this, only Rs 594 crore could be released to various departments. According to secretariat sources, hardly Rs 325 crore have actually been spent on developmental activities.

For the past nine months, Bihar has been plagued by upheavals of various kinds, including the Mandal imbroglio. The Government, virtually at a standstill, could mop up internal resources only to the tune of Rs 519 crore.

Last fortnight, the RBI flatly warned the Government either to gear up its resource collection machinery and slash its profligate expenditure or face suspension of payments from the RBI.

The opposition has already got into gear. Those who walked out of the swearing-in or refused to take oath have begun mobilising the grousers. In any case merely a jumbo-sized ministry cannot handle Bihar's jumbo-sized problems.

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